Altered States with Joseph Kramer part 1

Sam sits down to chat with Joseph Kramer, a pioneer in somatic sex education, to discuss his 40-year journey in body-based work, starting with massage therapy in the 1970s. 

Joseph developed and began teaching his approach to erotic massage during the AIDS crisis in San Francisco to provide a way of accessing pleasure and heightened erotic states without infection risk. This conversation traces how sexually, sensually and somatically induced altered states have shaped his life path and work, with a particular emphasis on sustained sexual arousal in self pleasure practice.  He highlights the therapeutic benefits of erotic massage and non-ejaculatory self pleasure practice in potentiating the shift of troublesome patterns and contributing to personal growth and expansion. 

A follow up conversation with Joseph will come in the next episode. 

Joseph's work can be accessed through all the schools that still teach his work.

Celebrating the Body Erotic can be experienced through The Body Electric School. 

US: https://bodyelectric.org/

AUS: https://bodyelectric.com.au/

Find out more about Sam and their work at www.integratingintimacy.com

The Interactive Erotic Educator Training is now taking enrolments for 2026. Find out more at www.intereros.com

Have an experience of somatic sex education in the comfort of your own home by signing up for queer erotic embodiment classes at www.queereroticembodiment.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:04

Hello, welcome. Uh Joseph, thank you so much for joining me to have a conversation today about altered states or non-ordinary states or ecstatic states or whatever language we we find to describe these kinds of experiences in the world of somatic sex education. I'm really excited to have you here as you know the the I mean I could like jokingly say like the the daddy, the daddy of somatic sex education. That's a bit you know, tongue-in-cheek, but you were really there at the forefront, helping develop these practices, bringing them in to communities to support them in big crises and meaning making, in can in you know, forming communities around sex positive positivity. It's like super radical and beautiful. Um, I'm so grateful. I just want to express personally for your work, how it's impacted me and and given me this opportunity um to work as a somatic sex educator and seeing the effect it has on people's lives. Um so I've done a bit of an introduction of you and a bit of a bit just in my rambling on, but I wonder if there's anything else you'd like to say to introduce yourself to people who are listening.

SPEAKER_04 1:34

I'm very grateful to be here. Um my name is Joseph Kramer, and I've been doing uh body-based somatic work and sex work for a little over 40 years. I started with by creating a massage school. I was a massage therapist, and I started by in the 1970s, and I started creating a massage school, and I had no intention of dealing with sex, a lot of massage schools. I'm not sure about Australia, but massage is very um uh distance itself from sex. This is not erotic, this is massage, yeah. And um and I got pulled in a little bit, I would say, to sex because in the early 1980s, um, AIDS hit in San Francisco, and I thought a safe end it was really bad here. And it was one of the places on the planet where it started, people were dying, and and there was no cure. So I knew massage, and I thought, well, massage isn't gonna do it, but erotic massage is a way people can connect. So I made up and developed an erotic massage, and that was my entryway in. I had no intention of being a sex educator, and then I went on from that evolved, it was important, that evolved, and I um I went to graduate school and got a PhD in sex in human sexuality, and and I thought there needs to be legal and professional, uh, more professional areas. There were body-based areas, but it didn't deal with explicit sexuality. And so I started sexological body work or uh somatic sex education is another name for it. Um, so I've been doing this for quite a while, but for the last few years, I among other things, I just I want to say I've realized I've really been sad about touch. And I don't think there's enough touch in the world, not erotic touch, not sex, just touch, and among between couples and lovers and wives and husbands. And um so I've almost been going back to my roots of massage school, but even before that, um, for example, one of the things I tell people is if a relative or friend is getting married, don't give them a microwave or uh, you know, whatever towels, give them a massage table. You know, and I'm and I've really been pushing education, even among sex educators, to that's a primary foundational place to start is people valuing and touching the body and connecting. So that's but that's been the arc of my uh my last 40 years. I'm still a sex educator. Um I identify I identify as queer. Queer was not a very big identification. 40 years ago, I was a gay man. And my main lovers, I've had several male lovers, but my main lovers have been female, yeah, up to female identified, even up to the present moment. I have two wives. So um uh, and this doesn't mean I don't have this attraction toward men that you know we call homosexual. It just means that love goes beyond those attractions and touch does our one of our main interactions with my with my wives is massage and erotic massage too, but but both.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:55

So I'm gonna pause there because we're gonna dive into various areas and you're going.

SPEAKER_05 6:00

Yeah, I mean, even just from what you've shared there in this coming almost this full circle back to touch, like the simplicity of this dedicated space and massage table that you put a body on for the purpose of exploring touch, it almost occurs to me that that this project has been focusing on, you know, like sexually induced altered states or altered states in somatic sex education. And in some of the conversations I've already had, I spoke to Ellen Heed yesterday, who was talking about the altered states, like the more kind of hypnagogic, downregulated state that will happen with a person with just craniosacral bone holding. That really like touch-induced altered states could be a way of framing this rather than you know, necessarily arousal-based or erotic. That's one category where it's involving, you know, genital touch or um building of arousal. But I I love this um focus on how touch starts the culture is or how people find themselves at the moment. I experience the same thing. I work as a sex worker and somatic sex educator, and people are just craving touch. Often when you ask someone, when you really figure like get down to what someone wants, it's to be held.

SPEAKER_04 7:32

And I see just generally the the interest in the availability of places we can go in screens and elsewhere has really um there's a disembodiment. There's less folk, there's less value in the body and the states of the body and touching. Um uh friends would rather play video games together than touch each other or uh a rat, you know, even boys would wrestle in the old days. Now they'll no, that's play video games. So it's yeah, I see and touch is the antidote to disembodiment. Yeah, you know, it it yes. In my my massage room is through those curtains there, and I um after touching someone after massage, whatever happens, I have a huge mirror on one wall, and I have people get up and look at themselves in the mirror and say whatever they want to say. And it, you're right, it does activate different states in people, and different people is different states. Yeah, but before the massage, most people don't want to look at themselves. There, I'm not I'm not one who says, okay, take all your clothes off and pull the sheets over you, and I'll come back. And so for a lot of people, it's their body naked, you know. So look in the mirror. Nope, they're not happy about that. But afterwards they are. I mean, there's something, some shift, and it's not one state, there's multiple places. We don't even know the toucher. I don't even know the places they've gone. I sometimes ask them, you know, what are you feeling? How do you I'll be back next week, you know, or something like that. I'm sure you have the similar things after a session with somebody. Um, wow, I've made contact.

SPEAKER_05 9:38

I mean, like that's when I I have my I have my you know practiced um story that I'll tell people about how I came into this work. And that's one of the core elements of it. I was studying psychology, thinking I'll be a psychologist, I'll do talk therapy after having you know done quite a heady degree at university, and decided um to start doing erotic massage so I had more time to study. I could make a bit more money, do erotic massage, and I started having experiences with people where we would have an hour or 90 minutes of full body touch, slow breathing, attuning with each other. And they would soften and open. And I compared that to my to Mike, and I would soften and open. I experienced like none of that when I was doing talk therapy, and I thought, what am I doing? Why am I wanting to be a psychologist when I could be doing this? When I could be having this kind of impact on someone or having them experience themselves in this way after an hour.

unknown 10:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:57

There are millions of psychotherapists in the world, and and I they I value what their work. Um, but it's really there's a corrective happening in the last 20 years, I guess. It started out body-based psychotherapy, they would call it. Now people say um somatic psychotherapy. Almost everybody advertises that, yeah. But but they don't touch. Yeah. And um the in the United States, there's more and more psychotherapists to the place where um explorations with psychedelics are happening. And I think this is wonderful, but psychedelics are happening with people who don't touch. Yeah. There could, there's, I and I think that's one route, but there needs to be other ways.

SPEAKER_05 11:51

Yeah, or people who don't have experience with touch who maybe have quite, I mean, I from my from our perspective, primitive protocols around how touch might come into those sessions. Um, and it's that's absolutely something that I'm interested in in this conversation. It it feels as though there's a lot that we can that we might offer as a warning for people who are working with altered states in other modalities using plants around touch and how touch might might happen. Yeah, is there more that you want to say about that? I mean, you're kind of living, you're living in in the states where I feel like there's a lot more going on in that area than there is in Australia.

SPEAKER_04 12:38

You know, the it's not totally legal, but there's certain places in the city of Oakland, the city I'm in, passed a law. They the government says this is still illegal. The law they passed in the city is that their police department, there's no money for enforcing anything that has to do with um the use or possession of psychedelics or well, uh, cannabis is already, it's not legal, right? That's legal in the state, but as far as psychedelics. And I go, oh nice. And so, you know, and what as long as we're on psychedelics and psychotherapy, the one thing I did learn from psychotherapy is the preparation, intense preparation for psychedelic trip and intense aftercare and integration. Yeah. And and I think I think the work of erotic work, erotic massage is an an analog to the psychedelics, and we need to look at that, the preparation ahead of time, not just okay, you're gonna get an erotic massage, and then you get up thanks by. There's this time to integrate, you know, it's bring this all together.

SPEAKER_05 14:09

Yeah, so that that is it's absolutely some. I mean, we're talking about the ethical holding of these experiences or like best practice around altered states experiences. And you've hit on something really beautiful, actually, that I haven't had it framed like that before. That all what's coming up for me is we have a lot as somatic sex educators or people who work with touch and have beautiful protocols around client-led touch that we could offer um people working who maybe don't have that experience. And then there's this the framing, preparation and integration that we could really be learning a lot about from yes, the psychotherapeutic world. How does that how does that um yeah? Well, I guess tell me more about what you've learned there. What have you seen that's supportive, or how has that changed how you work with people?

SPEAKER_04 15:08

So I've just I've just in the last year done two long erotic massage classes for advanced people who've who are doing this as sex workers, as uh therapists in whatever way. So these are not beginners. And this was so one way that I started was using the psychedelic um, in the psychedelic world, they use a thing called set and setting. And this, what is your personal inside, how are you today, and the settings around how to set this up in the best way possible. Um, for example, in erotic massage, I think in talking to people beforehand, it's um it's to find out how embodied this person is, how much they feel what you're doing. Because there's some people who are kind of numbed out. This is and a preparation might be before you come for a session, if you exercise a bit or walk, you know, walk and you alert people. And uh indigenous peoples often avoided eating before psychedelic, you know, mushrooms and peyote and things. So to say, um, if you know, maybe it's maybe not to have to eat enough to nourish yourself, but not too much before we're doing our session. Yeah. Or eat afterwards. But I mean those are those are small ways of just being with the body. Um and intention, I think, is the biggest thing beforehand. What because this is in the set, what do you want to happen? What do you uh what's the what are some things that could happen, or what are you feeling? You know. Um yes, and in I've spent a lot of time with intention, it's big. There's intention in in the mind, I would like to feel more or something. Then there's specific intention, you know. I'd like you to spend a lot of time on my sacrum, you know, at that area, or my feet. I feel I need to be pulled down into my feet, or um very light touch, or more, you know, whatever. There's a variety of things. Um the other thing I see about this is to look at this as part of a process. So there's a preparation and there's integration, but what where do we want to go from here the next time, you know, with with our work? And so the people right away, oh yes, that's I want I want to come back and focus here, and we'll we'll work some more on this. So those are those are areas um that those are things that come to mind right now that I do with erotic massage.

SPEAKER_05 18:22

Yeah, it strikes me that that um that forward-looking question helps to kind of situate the experience, to place it on a map as part of a process where like when it's possible to stumble into an altered state experience without framings for it. And it can be difficult. Like, I think what what can kind of trip people up is this okay, that's that exists out there, I don't know where to put it, I don't really know how I got there. So, this education aspect and how are we working with it or what will happen next feels really important for such an important part for that integration. Yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm curious about how um like in your as a practitioner, you have so much experience giving giving touch and supporting people with these experiences. And I'm I'm curious about your own experience, like like your personal journey in relation to you know altered states or ecstatic states or embodied states, embodied, yeah, embodied states, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:40

So I think this is one of the things I ask people about their their practices. So if people have a practice, yeah, it's gonna be easier to work with them. But if it's meditative practice, I sit in meditation, that's one level. But if people say I bike uh every other day 20 miles or I swim, sorry, I've got it's it's a fire alarm test.

SPEAKER_05 20:07

My building has decided this is a good time for a fire alarm test.

SPEAKER_04 20:13

Do you have to leave?

SPEAKER_05 20:14

No, it's just making noise. Okay, I think it's done now. Sorry. So if someone has a practice, a practice that is meditation, a still practice is one thing, but something that's embodied.

SPEAKER_04 20:28

I I want to know, yes, what they so if people have um so when you asked me about my experience, I look back on what things led me into my body regularly. And I I teach erotic massage and sex now, but one of the things that happened to me is I remember um about even before when I was very young, age five, I remember finding rubbing my penis felt good. And I did this regularly when I would go to bed and rub, and I just this was a delight, and so this carried through. I I was grew up Catholic, so at in Catholic school, at one point I came to me that this was wrong and a sin, so I had to deal with that, but still, this was my ritual, one of my and it was me feeling my body. At age 14, I remember starting to run, and no one I'm no one ran. It's a bonal arm test.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

This is a boner along test.

SPEAKER_05 21:54

I'm not sure if it's gonna there. We go.

SPEAKER_04 21:57

So at about age 14, I started to. Run and this running, a slow run, a jog for distance, and this grew to about an hour a day, um, within a couple of years, but almost every day. Yeah, so there's this there's breathing with this, and this was something that I did that said to me, I have a body, yeah. So I I feel in terms of growing up, um those there was breath, and and then um I I was Catholic, but as a 17-year-old, I thought I kind of bought into the whole Catholic thing, and I thought, I'd like to be, I'd like to be a priest, I like to serve others. And I wasn't, it was just a a narrow thing at first, but I entered the a religious order, the Jesuits, and I had 10 years of preparation. I was never ordained, but I had these 10 years. And what the preparation there was, was the skill there was to open one's heart to be available for others, to be there for others.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

This is a viralantist.

SPEAKER_05 23:24

I'm hoping it's striving to be quite persistent.

SPEAKER_04 23:33

Right. So this was important to me, and it was kind of the way of saying this is to be a person for others. That's that I'm here for others. And my father and my grandmother were very much connected to the earth. They were out, we're outdoors all the time, the earth rural. So I had the beginnings of this open-heartedness to the earth, but it that the earth also became, it wasn't just people in these years, it was open-heartedness. This, how can I, which later on in massage, you know, I would say it's empathy. But at this time I just knew that it had to be of service.

SPEAKER_05 24:19

And so when I left I'm curious about how embodiment um factored into that process of that preparation, that open-hearted to be a person for others.

SPEAKER_04 24:33

Um so I was the the interesting thing about the Jesuits, there was a commitment to not be sexual. So my masturbation practice had to stop stopped. But I still ran almost every day when I was teaching, when I was whatever it was. It's it's the way way of the world, it's like it's really so but it's a good question you just ask. How how is this embodied? I felt um it's a I felt it after the fact as a as a state, so that's was practiced at certain times. And and um in fact, in the Jesuits, we were sent to experiments where we would learn to open our hearts. Okay, I'm sent to an orphanage to work with, I'm sent to an old folk zone. I was sent to live in a Catholic parish in a uh in the poor section of St. Louis. Um, so there are various places where I did, I was sent to teach for three years to teach high school kids, and all of those places were practicing opening up the heart. And I to be there in in very physical ways. So I was acting, I mean, I had things to do from this place, yeah. So it was a felt experience, and I say that because you can call it love. And I'm I think romantic love has grabbed love, yeah. And when people say love in the songs and the poems and all this, and and in sex tantra and all this, it's this connection, and it's quite wonderful romantic love, but this other part of being of being there with others and and in connection with them. So I was still in the Jesuits when I got a massage, and it was my first massage. I was 25 years old. I got a massage, and it was I will, I was running, I was in my body, I was running. Yeah, but I got this touch and I go, Oh my god. I remember it was it was the most important two hours of my life up to that point. It was my academic advisor who was a priest, gave me this massage. He had gone and learned, he came and said to all his students, I'm I just learned uh Esseline massage.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

He's a Byralongtist. He's a Byralongtist.

SPEAKER_04 27:42

So um, so I knew that this path was so he had learned Esseline, Esseline massage.

SPEAKER_05 27:49

Your Jesuit priest had gone to oh how amazing.

SPEAKER_04 27:53

Well, we're in California, yes. Yeah, what yeah, the the Jesuits are pretty yeah open, but I got this, and it was um I said, Oh, this is the work I want to do. My heart, this is how I want to uh express my heart. And so I left the Jesuits and went to massage school immediately. And from massage school, I what the Jesuits did teach me is I worked at the Jesuits start schools or schools all over the world that are universities, high schools, and it's coming together of groups of people to do something. I thought I want to do that, so I started a school, Body Electric, and I invited the the people that I knew best, and it was a queer school in San Francisco. None of the schools had a um even this is in the 70s, none was had a even mention of gay. When you match up with somebody, it was male, female in the classes. And so I decided I want to start a school that's for queer people. I said gay and non-gay, queer and non-queer. So everybody's welcome, but now it was from this perspective. And so most of the people who came were gay, people who thought there were, and from that, that was the place that was available to be there when AIDS hit, too, that we could teach erotic massage. But anyway, that was an expression I felt of this open-heartedness. It was to be there for yes, it's right there.

SPEAKER_05 29:39

It's this yeah, this connection between your heart and your hands.

SPEAKER_04 29:43

Yeah, oh, it is. Yes, that's you're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_05 29:48

Yeah, beautiful. I I I don't think I've heard you taught tell the story before of your first massage and how formative that was. Um, and tell me about so you said that was the most important two hours of your life. What and and it's it seems like there's this connection. And there is this connection between maybe ecstatic experiences or otherworldly experiences and insight and and changes in life direction.

SPEAKER_04 30:19

Or yeah, that's what it was. It was. So I was in this place where I was educated to be of service to others, but it was and in religion, laying on of hands, people are dying, helping people. Uh, even in the rituals, it's hands-on people, the bishop puts his hands on, so there's a lot of touch. But um, but I hadn't found my way of I'm I'm in this, but I'm I'm doing the work of other people. I'm being educated to open my heart, and I'm grateful for that. Yeah. So my my advisor, this is in Berkeley, California. It was just a few few uh few miles from where I am right now in Oakland. And my advisor went to Esselin and got my priest, got certified, and he came back and it was at a at a lunch table, and there were six of us around the table, and he said, you know, I just learned massage. If any of you'd like him to get a massage, and there was this nervousness I remembered among these people because there's kind of a uh the body is not fully grasped, you know, it's this is religion, is unfortunately um it's this is the bad part of the human, the spiritual is the good.

SPEAKER_05 31:51

Anyway, people got up on the can be almost a bit pleasure, almost a bit pleasure phobic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:58

So I sat there and he said, um, I said, Oh, I like that. And um he said, Well, it's a naked massage, it's not erotic, but it's naked, and you need a massage table. And I go, I went back to my room and I took the door off my, I had a closet. I took the door off, put it on my desk, put blankets over it, tied all the stuff around it, and made a massage table. So he came and gave me a massage, and I was a little nervous. This man was going to massage me. What if I get, I'm 25 years old. What if I get an erection? What if, what if, what if? But he's sort of touching me and I paid attention. And um what it what it I have to say, this I was very touch deprived. Here's a 25-year-old study to be a priest who doesn't get touched. There's not cuddling, there's not this. So when I'm getting touched, these nerve endings are going, whoa.

SPEAKER_05 33:06

Yeah, but I and you didn't have your masturbation practice at that time, like you were running, but you didn't have self-touch either.

SPEAKER_04 33:13

Yes, exactly. So I was awake, but my nerve endings, and I remember the the precision that he what he said is and what the Esslum massage is this is to wake up your body so that you feel your body more. And um, as in almost all practices, the best practices are when you can focus your attack, how much you focus your attention is how much you often get out of this. And I attention was focused, I would touch. And the other thing was, he's a priest. This is okay, it'll be okay. You know, I'm not I'm not going out somewhere and getting a a rub. Um, anyway, it's just so the part that I remember, and I he he got down to my feet and he was massaging the webbing between my toes. And I just go, I didn't even know that I don't even remember having webbing between my toes, but it was that detailed everything in this massage. And when he left, there was a valuing of my body, a way that I I knew and and this awakening. I thought, yes, I'm looking for what my work is in the world to be of how could I would like to do what he did to others. This was amazing, and I did. That was my intention in doing massage, which I did for years before the erotic massage started, was to wake someone up as much as possible. So they, wow, they're you know, wow, they just the wonder of it all, you know, this this body. And then I got into the erotic massage because it was AIDS education, but I found, oh, the erotic wakes up in a different way, even more. Yeah, and this can this uh and it's not just one way of waking up each time, it's different. Um, and then I found doing erotic massage allows people to pay attention to their arousal and to play with it, or to dispense with shame if they want, or to learn to regulate it. That's as I as I went along, that's the phrase now to um men learning to regulate their arousal levels or or what how it flows through the body or what's going on. So arousal, erotic massage, massage allows one to regulate. I always involve breathing, yeah, but I add it um with the arousal. And then the latest, the last thing that I added, I thought people are just lying there still, they need to move. So I said, when I'm massaging you, I want you to respond to my touch. And so there was this people, I I didn't like them being still on my table. In fact, when people were still, I just stopped and said, you know, move a little bit. And when they moved, they got to move around, they they felt more. So this is the feeling, you know, feeling it. So this I started to call it um erotic massage dancing. And whereas it's a heavy term, I now call the person who's receiving massage the dancer. You can play and dance in any way you want. People are like, what? But really, I'm talking about people who come back again and again and they're they're learning about their body when they're aroused. And and that's as a sex educator, we're teaching people about what's possible there. And with partners or with their lover, it's not always time for education, you know, they're there in a different way. So here's a time to to pay attention and learn. And out of that came sexological body work, which is how we've connected in a sense.

SPEAKER_05 37:31

Yeah, yeah. I love that the there's this building first touch and just being really present with the touch, and then touch and breath, and the use of breath, bringing in that sense of regulation or modulation as kind of this more active choice element. How is my body? What state is my body in to receive this? How am I receiving this? And the movement on top of that as well, then oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 38:04

And different states come up. There's people think arousal uh from masturbation or from being erotic massage. There's different states that can come up. And what my intimate, one of my wives, has a thing, she calls them gasms. She says, Oh, I have a crygasm coming on, I'm crying, or I have a laugh gasm, or I have a, and she'll put gasm on the end, meaning I'm in a state that arousal that's kind of hooked up with arousal, but I'm going this direction or this direction. Yeah, it's kind of nice.

SPEAKER_05 38:40

Yeah, that there's like these kind of it's almost like like cooking. Like we have all these ingredients, these ingredients of embodiment, and they can be layered on in different ways to create different sensory experiences, different states.

SPEAKER_02 38:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 38:56

Connect then differently to the existential and emotional and narrative, depending on what they're associated with. And it feels that yeah, there are there, there's these building blocks, and then there's the meaning making that goes around it, which is what we were speaking to before around the setting and the integration. And and I'm really I'm really curious about, I mean, I can only imagine, I can only imagine what it would have been like in San Francisco during the AIDS crisis and bringing erotic practices to people who were were ill, were dying to their to their community, to your community. Um this is an excess like a big existential moment. I can only imagine what kinds of experiences were coming up in in these sessions and and classes.

SPEAKER_04 39:52

You know, I I thought this isn't just massage therapy. I was running a massage school. I thought this is a a different type of offering a profession, what these people are doing, working with people um erotically sometimes, even, you know, people have HIV in their bodies, and it's a ticking time bomb because there's no cure. You died in those days until 1996 when the first protease inhibitors arrived. Um but so I I I think it's a little bit my influence from my early Jesuit days. Yeah, but I I said I called, I thought this is a little bit like the sacred prostitutes of old, who were healers in the temple and uh um and laid hands on and fed people, but touched them and had sex with them. And uh one of the big ways the stories is when men came back from war, they just had all blood on them and from they to wash them and love them and clean that off so they could go back to their homes. They didn't take the war into their homes. But I thought we're doing that kind of work like sacred prostitute, but prostitute wasn't going to. I like the term, but it wasn't going to fly. So I used the term sacred intimate and um you're we're there for people's intimacy. And there were people who I worked with who actually had sex with people, safe sex with people who are dying regularly, not just erotic massage. And one man, I remember he he he always bragged, he says, I fucked AIDS, I fuck AIDS, and that was his cute thing, but what he really was there present for people who wanted to have sex, and a lot of people, you're right, because they're dying, they wanted that they wanted to be human. That was a way that pulled them into their bodies, yeah. You know, um what I recog I've had some horrible times in my life, and those were in a sense horrible times, but in a sense people were so focused. So we talk about mindfulness now. Mindfulness wasn't a big word then, but because of death, and the death was around, and people were dying, and everybody had several friends who were dying, and people died regularly. Half of all the people I knew, of all the gay men that I knew died. And and I had lots of clients, and I went to the hospital and touched people as they were dying. And um, by the way, when my father got sick and with cancer nine years ago in his 90s, um, my brothers and sisters really didn't have the skill, and they loved him, but they didn't have the skill to touch him and be with him. And I went and I was with him and stayed with him and washed him and cleaned him and all this, which is we skills I learned. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 43:21

And um so um to be with a to be with a body wherever it is in its journey, whatever state it's in with an open heart. I mean, that's yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:33

What's my father used to say, I'm feeling this, what's happening? And I said, I don't know, you're dying. We're both learning this for the first time. I kept saying you know, there wasn't a denying, but it was being in the present. Ah, yes. So being with bodies and dying is a is a I think this is a really interesting state. Being somebody who's a year away from 80, 80 years old, I think. This is the states, this is what I'm interested in now. What are these? How not just die, yeah, not just the end dying, but how does one um what are the practices? What are the ways that I can go toward dying? And it could be in a car accident, it could be with can, I don't know how people die. Uh you know, there's myriad ways, but right now I'm healthy, so I can, and it's so um ignored in the culture, even older folks, it's ignored. Yeah, so I'm not I've always found teachers and I'm having uh I would like to find better, I would like to find more teachers, let's put it that way. Yeah. Who but uh that is those are states too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:57

I'm curious about where you what what sort of practices do you feel are supporting you or or you feel will be supportive as life moves on.

SPEAKER_04 45:09

You know, when I when I when we I was educating way back at Body Electric and people were working with people with AIDS, I had trainings for sacred intimates. So they came, learned erotic massage. But the first ritual we did, the first one, people paired up, and one person was dying, and they were gonna die that day, and you were with them for an hour to two hours, and you had to just be with them. And then as a group, we came back and talked about what that was because we were making it up. There's no here's what you do. So I feel practicing dying is important, but um and it's scary, and sometimes I scare myself, but I also feel um I'm I it's scary not to face this. There we are humans, this amazing thing of being humans, and all the states and uh everything that's been available in this body, yeah, the the wisdom and the intelligence, it's it's there's a winding down or an ending to this. So, how how can I prepare for that even better than I am now?

SPEAKER_05 46:31

Yeah, when I'm it feels like there's this, there's this practice, and I can connect this to coming into a bodywork session or a body electric or some kind of um, you know, there's a physical practice and interaction, but really what that feels like is new and different every time. That there's a stepping into the unknown, a willingness to be with what you're not yet um all on top of, that you haven't formed habit around that you that's that's embedded in all of these practices that is so relevant to this process of of dying, which is you know the big, big unknown.

SPEAKER_04 47:15

Yes. And I I have regular massage, regular massage um that I bring this up good. I'm you know, I want this consciousness. As you give me massage, I just want I want to be aware that this is here. Um Bruce Springsteen came out with a song just about four years ago. Yeah. And the refrain is one minute you're here, the next minute you're gone. And he sings it so powerfully in this male voice. He's really like an American. Um he sings about America, yeah. But he's getting older too. So one minute you're here, the next minute you're gone. I really like that because it's the immediacy of it. I mean, it's the okay, I'm in the minute here, right? We're in the minute here.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:17

There's um a friend of mine goes to these things called philosophy cafes where people talk philosophy. And then I read online that there's such a thing as death cafes, where people get together online or in a cafe and talk about death. And so I looked, and there's none in Oakland recently. So I'm I'm going to have a death cafe with friends in in uh April. And the only there's no criteria except, and I'm inviting all people who are in their 70s or older. Yeah. And there's no criteria except what you talk about, except death, stories, your feelings, whatever. You are you can just be there, you don't have to talk, but it's it's a gathering to talk about it. So we'll see where that goes.

SPEAKER_05 49:12

Beautiful. It feels as though you are do you're kind of inviting in a new community of practice around dying. How do we develop a community around dying and learn about this and support each other with this process? Yeah. Which is so much, it's like what you've been able to do around sexuality in your life is developed through teaching people, through developing practitioners, this community of practice around sexuality.

SPEAKER_04 49:50

We shall see. It's a tag of war, it's it's it's the focusing of attention, it's the placing of attention. And we have so there's so many other interesting places to place one's attention, you know, here, here, here.

SPEAKER_05 50:04

Or demanding things demanding attention.

SPEAKER_04 50:07

Yes, yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_05 50:11

Yeah. I um and this is one of the things that's come up really strongly for me in looking at you know, non-ordinary states is some language that I like for this, for this purpose, where if you're constantly distracted, then actually focusing on one thing, and that thing even better being in your body is the most non-ordinary state you can kind of access.

SPEAKER_04 50:39

You know, there is one state that I um that's been important to me that I wanted to mention. Please, and um I don't know how this started, but when I was running, when I would run, there's something about I'm in my body, I'm running, I'm breathing, of being present. And I felt and thoughts that came in got I paid attention to in a different way. What thoughts come up when I'm running? And I so after I got into this, after I got into massage and erotic massage, um, and I started masturbating again after I left the Jesuits, and I brought this arousal um with up to the with the open heart. My heart, the heart genital connection became a major big deal for me in my body. And I actually with my hands would do this, and and while I'm while I'm aroused, and I started, I don't know how it happened to, but get insights, I would get thoughts, and my father always had yellow pads, big yellow pads, he wrote ideas down on. So I got a yellow pad, I remember at this time and started writing. I still have small yellow pads that I do, write notes. So I and so when I was aroused and some idea came up, and I realized that I'm at a different, I'm in a special state, and I don't know what that confluence is in me, but these ideas were interesting, and they often had to do with being a service of the heart, because that's what I was trying to do. How can I be of service? Yeah, how can I uh how can I use my talents in this world? And so to to be a massage therapist was was part of this, I mean, layers of this, and even to to do erotic massage in the AIDS era, I was I'm a paranoid personality, I'm afraid, I'm afraid of I'm a good boy, I don't want to cross the law, do anything wrong. But in my arousal in my heart, it's this is important. People need to learn erotic massage, and it became huge. There was a deluge in the year after I was busy every weekend around the United States teaching erotic massage and became huge, yeah. But then it was nuance too. I so it became a time of discernment, our ideas would come up, and um so I thought I've checked with other people, and this is my thing, and maybe I've run into some people like this, but other people in aroused states, other things happen. They um that may not be insights, but they may just go into bliss and they're into a certain type of bliss that then they they can share. Yeah. Um uh and I'm sure in your interviews you're getting this, but I find for me, I think it's was the connection of the heart, my open-heartedness, and and the arousals fueled it even more and brought clarity. So when I when I first started this out and said for 40 years I've been doing this, a lot of the things that I've done, the insight has come when I'm aroused, when I'm in that state. So I like, so I really honor aroused state in the body.

SPEAKER_05 54:52

Yeah, and aren't aren't we all lucky that you honored and paid attention to the insights that came through in these aroused states? I think there's some real wisdom there that sometimes things can come through and you can, you know, let them like a you know, waft through, or you can write them down and seize that opportunity to move beyond what you were before this period of arousal, before this insight came, before you opened to something coming in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 55:25

And what I found when I was giving erotic massage at the very first is people had all kinds of experiences during those erotic massages. But what I learned speaking to people later, a week or so later, is for the week or so afterwards, people felt clarity. There was a clarity, and a lot of people made decisions. Like people told me, many. They they moved out of their apartment, they broke up a relationship, they got a different job. And out of this erotic work, out of this arousal came clarity. So the our body stuff sitting here in our body, it's how does it come to the fore? Yeah, and trauma, it can be traumatic, I'm sure. People could get rid of trauma this way, they can do all kinds of things. But yeah, but I'm I'm uh states are to be, if possible, made use of and highest use. They're they're available for our use.

SPEAKER_05 56:35

And it feels like there's something in there of connecting the person to something that wants to move or something that wants to change, something that wants to be done.

SPEAKER_04 56:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 56:44

And I'm I'm reminded of of a little exchange that we had via email about critical learning periods and about, and it just came up in my conversation with Ellen too about people going kind of regressing during experiences, or um, the possibility of of like revisiting a stage in development where something went awry or a need wasn't met. I think trauma can can come into this conversation too, where where something was overwhelming and wasn't integrated. And there's that possibility of something, a new possibility opening in that experience through an arousal experience, through a well-held as well experience.

SPEAKER_04 57:32

The point you're making, I think, is there, yes, surprisingly, these erotic states can be learning environments. Yeah, and and the the idea of critical periods is the naming of the first two years of people's life or up until 11 or 12 for language. But and there's a whole body of knowledge of when people hit puberty, the hormones create a learning period here. It's a critical period for learning, and a lot of people don't learn during those periods, unfortunately. But but I also think aroused states can be wow, what's to be learned here? I mean, I I don't think it's that clear. I think it just comes up, it's they're in our bodies. Yeah. I don't I don't know if you watched the Olympics, if you know anything about the Olympics.

SPEAKER_05 58:28

Yeah, little bits, but yes.

SPEAKER_04 58:30

I only uh I knew nothing about the skater Malinan.

SPEAKER_01 58:35

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04 58:36

But he's a he's a US skater, and he had I saw on a reel a skater skating, and he did a backflip two months ago. And I go, somebody did a backflip on the ice, and it just I saw I focused on him, and I found out he had won every contest that he has done for the last three years, two or three years that around the world, and he was going to be the gold winner. Yeah, and he went into and I and he trains for six hours a day in this embodiment, and he went onto the ice, and when he went up to do his first, and he does things that no one else can do. Yeah, he went up and he he didn't he didn't do it, he didn't turn, he he fell twice. He was a terrible, he lost 70 points in technical and came in eighth instead of first, and he came and sat down after he came off the ice. Somebody who hadn't 21 years old, hadn't lost in years. And he had been denied coming to the Olympics four years ago. He sat and um he was he said his father was on one side and his he mumbled and it could be heard. He said, I wouldn't have skated like this if I went to the Olympics four years ago. And I thought, this was this was his body speaking. He I don't think he went out thinking this or anything. He went out and this happened, and it was very clear this was some trauma from four years ago. But he said it. It was uh so this was like a negative, but he said, Boy, am I gonna learn from this?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:27

But it was so clear how the state in his body got him. I uh it was it's there's a wonderful woman who I've been reading her stuff and listening to a podcast called Amanda Blake. And Amanda Blake is a coach, but one of her ways is she says the body is full of intelligence, and 10,000 of things the body does, intelligent things, are unconscious, it's happening all the time. It just if we're too hot, it we're cooled off. If you need to, all kinds of things are going on inside of us, the intelligence. Yeah, but that intelligence can be sometimes come to the fore, come out, and so practices can with intention, you can go into some. I would let that intelligence, I want to know more about this intelligence. So I think that's what we're about is and and that's freedom. There's that's liberation, I think, is to be able to tune into our own intelligence and make use of it.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:49

Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Tune into our body's intelligence to listen to it. Uh I mean, I'm like, it feels like, yeah, actually being in tune with the autonomic nervous system, with these kind of automatic processes. Ellen talked about moving into somatic time and what happens in somatic time.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:16

And yes, and some other people have named it sometimes flow is a somatic time. Yeah, and um uh oh there's yeah, Ellen Eed.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:35

Yeah. Beautiful. Joseph, is there anything that we haven't spoken about that that you would like to say? Anything around um altered states and and learning or change, anything that you any advice maybe that you would give practitioners moving into working with people?

SPEAKER_04 1:02:57

You know, there's I have a group of people right now I'm working with, and it was co-ed, one woman dropped out right before the group started. So it happens to be men, but the the group is embodied porn watching. And for me, I feel one of the biggest, I don't I don't have the normal problems with porn. The problem with porn I have is that people watching porn, their attention is so in the porn there's a forgetting of the body. Yeah, and so our work is to do practices that while you're watching can bring your awareness back to your body. So you ask if there's anything, it doesn't have to just happen with uh porn. But so I had these people, I said, let's stand. Oh, a lot of porn and a lot of masturbation is habit. So we're we're not very free. We do we have all these habits. How can we interrupt these habits? So I have people stand up. And I they've we're about halfway through this time period, and people are amazed at just what standing up does because they can still enjoy the porn, but they're moving the erotic energy through their body and all this. And um we're doing other interrupting of habits, and but what people are doing is it the porn becomes less important as people are noticing their body, it becomes more interesting to them, and that's I'm really I'm I think that's hilarious, but I'm glad to do this. But I just think sex has become so paltry sometimes with like getting off. And if I had a chance, I would tell all the all the kids, boys and girls, masturbate half of the time standing up. You know, that's just because there's a carryover to that motionless sex, there's not a big carryover to sex for the rest of your life. So I just wanted to say that this idea of standing up, I think getting some motion in your life. I want to leave that.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:23

You said yeah, anything beautiful, beautiful. Half the time masturbate standing up.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:30

Well, eventually it might be all the time. Yeah. Because but um yes, it's a and it's a different type of masturbation. I mean, I even not porn, but just move and ah yeah, yep.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:45

A friend and I a friend and I have recently started teaching uh queer erotic embodiment classes. Again, I taught for a few years with the four erotic explorers.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:54

We stopped doing that and now we're Oh, you did, were you with them?

SPEAKER_05 1:05:56

Yeah, that was me. I was one with Kaggy and Patrick and you come. Um, and a friend and I have just started a new group and we're going through the somatic pillars first up. So we've done breath, we'll do sound and the movement class. I'm it's already I was, you know, but what are different shapes that we can self-pleasure in? But just this really simple standing up. That's a a way the way to start anyone listening to this next time you masturbate. Stand up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:28

Move. Yes.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:31

Beautiful. Thank you so much for this conversation. It has been delicious. Well worth savoring. As everything is. Um, and thank you. I'll let you know when it's available and when I've wonderful. It's been, I feel like we we have met now. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:53

We have. Thank you. Great. It was a delight having a conversation with you.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:59

Yes. I'm just gonna stop the recording.